graxx
Intern
- Joined
- Nov 18, 2010
- Posts
- 62
After many great trips with Emirates, I returned from London to Sydney this week and can't help but feel they have grown too big to properly cope.
The flight from London wasn't bad- new A380 and the new Business seats were fine. Trouble started when we landed at Dubai and were parked on the tarmac, seemed like some kilometres from the terminal. Unloading the plane was a real drag. Everyone was left standing for about 15 minutes and then we had to climb down to the lower deck (embarrassingly having to pass all the fuming economy passengers while the top deck emptied) to get onto buses. We then drove, and drove, and drove, stopping and staring for about half and hour and were finally dumped (after standing in a queue of buses) at a doorway where we had to queue again for a security check. Finally up on the departures area, we discovered we were at the far end of the vast terminal and had to lug our hand luggage (2 laptops etc can get very heavy!!) for what seemed miles, only to discover when we got to the middle that we had to get the train to the other terminal.
Finally got into the Lounge 46 minutes after we got out of the plane, just in time to have a shower and load onto the next flight (old A380 and looking a bit tired).
Emirates are in the process of building a new terminal and a new airport (40 K's away), but my feeling is that the glamorous airline is showing cracks. When terminals get too big , it makes them tedious to use (I stopped flying Cathay because of the ridiculous distances at HK to get to connecting flights) and I think Emirates are in that fix. Their service on the aircraft seems to be suffering the same syndrome, where the staff don't seem to 'get it' like they used to.
All in all, the London-Sydney experience is not one I would like to repeat and it was not, in my terms, a continuing flight, as one generally gets with Qantas for instance.
Was this just a glitch or is it a symptom of decay?
The flight from London wasn't bad- new A380 and the new Business seats were fine. Trouble started when we landed at Dubai and were parked on the tarmac, seemed like some kilometres from the terminal. Unloading the plane was a real drag. Everyone was left standing for about 15 minutes and then we had to climb down to the lower deck (embarrassingly having to pass all the fuming economy passengers while the top deck emptied) to get onto buses. We then drove, and drove, and drove, stopping and staring for about half and hour and were finally dumped (after standing in a queue of buses) at a doorway where we had to queue again for a security check. Finally up on the departures area, we discovered we were at the far end of the vast terminal and had to lug our hand luggage (2 laptops etc can get very heavy!!) for what seemed miles, only to discover when we got to the middle that we had to get the train to the other terminal.
Finally got into the Lounge 46 minutes after we got out of the plane, just in time to have a shower and load onto the next flight (old A380 and looking a bit tired).
Emirates are in the process of building a new terminal and a new airport (40 K's away), but my feeling is that the glamorous airline is showing cracks. When terminals get too big , it makes them tedious to use (I stopped flying Cathay because of the ridiculous distances at HK to get to connecting flights) and I think Emirates are in that fix. Their service on the aircraft seems to be suffering the same syndrome, where the staff don't seem to 'get it' like they used to.
All in all, the London-Sydney experience is not one I would like to repeat and it was not, in my terms, a continuing flight, as one generally gets with Qantas for instance.
Was this just a glitch or is it a symptom of decay?